


Other People

by Cumbermarvel (UglyJackal)



Series: Marvel Whumptober 2018 [6]
Category: Doctor Strange (2016), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Character Study, Whumptober
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-11
Updated: 2018-10-11
Packaged: 2019-07-29 13:45:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 758
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16265435
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/UglyJackal/pseuds/Cumbermarvel
Summary: Death happened to other people. To sick people. To inured people. Not to doctors, not to world-class surgeons.





	Other People

**Author's Note:**

> Whumptober 2018 day 11: Hypothermia
> 
> my awesome friend, Mischief (aprettystrangeao3) helped me out with some of this fic!

Stepping through The Ancient One’s portal was a surprisingly painless feeling, though he did feel like his cells had been chewed up and spat out. Not unlike how the car crash had made him feel. As the cold bit and gnawed on his bones, he tucked his fragile hands under his armpits, in an attempt to keep the ice from gathering around the sensitive pins holding them together.

He was impressed by the sheer scale of Mount. Everest; it had always been known as one of the largest mountains in the world, but to see it up close was truly something else.

Though it wasn’t as impressive when The Ancient One left through a portal, stating that he’d probably go into shock within a few minutes. The orange sparks slipped through his aching fingers as he tried to grab onto it, to beg it to stay for just a few more moments, just so that he could get out of the cold.

But there was no such mercy for a man like him.

He wound his arm in a circle, desperate to open the portal. Oh, God, please, please, please!

Two minutes. He had two minutes to get a portal open.

He could do it. Yeah. He was capable.

Just imagine the courtyard. Where he had been training. It was simple enough. Just picture it.

There! Some orange sparks! Perfect, he was getting somewhere.

Thirty seconds passed.

And then thirty more.

His hands were bruising purple as they slowed and slowed and slowed to a frozen stop. No, he had to keep going. He _had_ to.

The cold numbed the pain, the roaring pain that he usually felt _all the time_ in his hands. And panicked eyes that held entire galaxies in them watched the icy blue that crept up his fingers. Grabbing, piercing, groping touches as the ice clambered up his skin.

And then, like a bullet to the stomach, it hit him.

He was going to die.

Right here, on this mountaintop. His corpse would probably be covered by the snow, hidden from sight like a failed experiment, a blanket laid across his body like a dead patient. The sorcerers back at Kamar-Taj would probably just shake their heads and call him another lost cause.

And there was no one to say goodbye to.

He couldn’t even apologise to Christine like he so desperately wanted to.

He couldn’t apologise to Nick, for humiliating him on that day.

He couldn’t apologise to anyone.

But then who would want petty _words_? Especially from his cruel mouth.

Failure was something he knew. Something he knew so well that it may as well have been ingrained in his skin. He had failed at magic. He had failed at driving. He had failed at keeping his loved ones by his side. He had failed _himself_ , failed to become whole again, failed to stop the shaking.

Failed to become a better person.

He had entertained fantasies of returning to the hospital, his hands steady, to pick up the scalpel again and save someone’s life. He would have walked back in and taken Christine in his arms, kissed her, apologised to her. He would have walked back in and taken his job in his arms.

But not now.

Looking Death in the face was certainly not as welcoming as he had once thought, when her gnarled hands would hold his own, wrinkled by age, it would have been years in the future. He had always felt so detached from death. He had seen it happen, been there to see the mistakes that the doctors had made, mistakes that he would never have dreamed of making. He had been there to write down the time of death, to cover the patients with a sheet.

Death had never been something that he had worried about facing.

Death happened to _other_ people. To sick people. To inured people. Not to doctors, not to world-class surgeons.

Not to him.

Not to Stephen Strange, age forty-two.

And yet.

He hadn’t realised that he had collapsed on his knees until he felt the wet cold seep in through the robes on his knees.

Hot tears fell from the galaxy, down onto the surface of the mountain, burning the snow around where they fell.

His breath came in clouds of condensed air so thick that he couldn’t see the open portal. Almost didn’t feel the hands on his shoulders that pulled him back into the warmth. He lay on hard stone, shivering like a newborn lamb.

‘I’m sorry,’ he mumbled.

**Author's Note:**

> Buy me a coffee: https://ko-fi.com/stephenstrangestan


End file.
